Fallout 3 and Diablo III Controversies Examined

Destructoid’s Jim Sterling has apparently had enough of “franchise fanboys”, as he’s decided to editorialize about the commotion that erupted during the development of Fallout 3 and the ongoing petition to make Diablo III a darker, more macabre experience than it looks to be shaping up to be.

One of the main problems with these so-called fans is the fact that they never want things to change. They’d rather that games never evolved, and that 1996 had been the last year a new game was ever made. Nobody typifies this more than Fallout fanboys, who threw a fitful tantrum over Fallout 3. Their problem? The fact that it wasn’t 100% exactly like the original Fallout.

An original Fallout that, I may remind you, was released in 1997. Never mind that games have moved on since then and a game that played exactly like Fallout likely wouldn’t have made any money, and then nobody would get anything in the future. A lot of these complaints stem from the arrogant idea that the fans know much more about a game than the developers themselves. They talk as if their word is law, telling us that “this is not a Fallout game.”

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Fact is, this was the first Fallout game in years, and most people loved it. So, these people were complaining about a new game for their favorite franchise that was pretty good by all accounts and made a lot of money, ensuring future Fallout games for quite some time. Yet, had these guys had their way, I doubt we’d even be talking about Fallout DLC, or New Vegas, or anything Fallout-related right now. Had these guys had their way, we’d have a game that looked, sounded, and played like something from 1997, and it would have sold to a small group who would then have likely complained that it hadn’t changed enough.

What Mr. Sterling doesn’t realize is that most of the fans that were upset weren’t necessarily asking for a game identical to the original Fallout a decade later. The franchise certainly needed some modernization – higher resolution textures, better sound effects, physics support, widescreen support, and what have you – but the jump from a traditional isometric, turn-based RPG to a first-person FPS/RPG hybrid was too much for a lot of people.

What would the Diablo fanbase say if Diablo III suddenly went first-person and played like an Elder Scrolls game?